Mour­inho’s highs and lows

Jose Mour­inho, sacked by Manch­ester United a week be­fore Christ­mas, has been in foot­ball man­age­ment for just over 18 years dur­ing which time, be­lieve or not, he has won 22 ma­jor tro­phies/com­pe­ti­tions, mainly with Chelsea and FC Porto from his na­tive coun­try of Por­tu­gal.

Over­all, he man­aged teams in 909 games, at­tain­ing an av­er­age win­rate of 64.8 with his best anal­y­sis com­ing with Real Madrid, 71.9. His record with Chelsea was 63.6 and with Manch­ester United 58.3.

Sur­pris­ingly – to some – only Sir Alex Fer­gu­son (59.7 %) had a bet­ter win­rate record as a man­ager with United than Mour­inho. Ernest Mang­nall (1903­12) av­er­aged 54.16; David Moyes 52.94 and Louis Van Gaal 52.43.

He won do­mes­tic League ti­tles in Eng­land with Chelsea (3), In­ter Mi­lan (2) Porto (2) and Real Madrid 1. He was do­mes­tic Cup win­ner with Porto, Chelsea, Mi­lan and Real Madrid; lifted the Cham­pi­ons League with Porto and Mi­lan; tri­umphed in UEFA/ Europa League fi­nals with Porto and Manch­ester United. He also won the League Cup with Chelsea (3 times) and Manch­ester United (once) and cel­e­brated Char­ity Shield glory also with Chelsea and United.

It all went wrong, re­sults­wise, dur­ing his third and last sea­son with Real Madrid (201213… 62.3 per­cent win­rate), with Chelsea (2015­16… 36 per­cent win rate) and with Manch­ester United (2018­19… 41.7 per­cent win­rate).

He won 21 var­i­ous Coach/ Man­ager of the Year awards and re­ceived the BBC’s Sports Per­son­al­ity of the Year award in 2005 (not for smil­ing).

He spent £391.5m on new play­ers when man­ager at Old Traf­ford – in­clud­ing the splash­ing out of £89m on French in­ter­na­tional Paul Pogba from Ju­ven­tus); £75m on Romelu Lukaku (from Ever­ton); £52m on Fred (from Shakhtar Donetsk); £40m on Ne­manja Matic (from Chelsea); £31m on Vic­tor Lin­de­lof (from Ben­fica); £30m on Eric Bailly (from Vil­lar­real) and £19m on Diogo Dalot (from FC Porto). And he also signed Alexis Sanchez (from Arse­nal) in a £30m ex­change deal which saw Hen­rikh Mkhi­taryan move to the Emi­rates.

United scored 151 goals in 93 Premier­ship games un­der Mour­inho… 54 in 2016­17, 68 in 2017­18 and 29 up to his sack­ing on the 18th of De­cem­ber last.

Mour­inho was the 18th dif­fer­ent man to hold the po­si­tion of man­ager of Manch­ester United. Two pre­vi­ous ones had held the post twice – Wal­ter Crick­mer (1930s) and Sir Matt Busby, be­tween 1945 and 1971.

In his first two sea­sons in charge of the Reds, Mour­inho saw United fin­ish 6th and sec­ond re­spec­tively, the lat­ter 19 points be­hind archri­vals and cham­pi­ons Manch­ester City. They were lan­guish­ing in sixth place when he left Old Traf­ford – 19 points be­hind lead­ers Liver­pool and 18 adrift of neigh­bours City.